


Under the Clouds

by chronicAngel



Series: Leaves in the Summer [13]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Background Relationships, Break Up, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Friends, Death in Childbirth, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Love, Long-Term Relationship(s), POV Third Person, Sad Ending, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-09 18:10:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12281790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: Everything they do is under the clouds.This fic was beta read bycaffeinewentz!





	Under the Clouds

Nara Shikamaru is born in the late afternoon on a day that smells like rain and wet grass, with dark and light clouds mixing together in the drab grey sky like paint water. The cold air around them slices to the bone, but it is a respite to breathe in after something as stressful as a birth, filling everyone's lungs with a cool relief and allowing them to exhale their anxieties as the lazy boy rests his head against his mother's chest and tries to doze off while she fights off anyone who tries to hold him.

The sun peeks through the clouds when he is passed from his mother to his father, and then an hour later the air feels warm as Yamanaka Inoichi holds tiny Shikamaru for the first time. His breathing is strong, and it makes Inoichi smile. "He will be a strong shinobi."

Sometimes, talking about their children only in the terms of future warriors is difficult, only made harder when he loses another cousin or in-law to the lifestyle, but they all know what it would mean for the village if the Ino–Shika–Chō formation were to come to an end. As uncomfortable as it makes any one of them individually, it is about more than just them. He has been gazing lovingly at the child in his arms as though he were his own son for nearly an hour when liquid begins to drip on the floor, and he realizes that his wife is the source. It occurs to him shortly that her water has just broken.

His daughter arrives stubbornly into the world fourteen hours and thirty-seven minutes later in the guest bedroom of the Nara clan head's house, delivered by the same exhausted midwife that was about to kick the guests out, pack up her things, and leave after the quick birth of Shikamaru. His wife screams, and no matter how much any one person in the room tries to quiet her, she cannot be consoled, face slick with sweat and mousy brown hair sticking to her forehead as she squeezes Akimichi Daiko's hand. When the baby arrives, the girl doesn't have much hair, but she has startlingly blue eyes like twin diamonds or the summer sky after a rainstorm. His face falls when he looks to his wife, whose eyes are falling closed and who has more blood on the sheets than he has heard of for a simple childbirth. "Her name..." She sounds so quiet, like speaking is a struggle. "Is Ino..." They'd had a suffix planned, but when his wife's breathing slows to a stop there, he names her only Ino to honor his wife's memory.

✿ ✿ ✿

At one year old, Ino can't yet walk like Shikamaru can, nor does she have a wonderful grasp on language, but she babbles away frequently in a sassy yet elegant tone that her father says reminds him of her mom. Shikamaru said his first words weeks ago, but Yoshino will complain to whomever she can catch in her whirlwind of grievances that he never says much of anything despite how smart they both know he is and just how much he is capable of. Inoichi filters her words out carefully to watch their children playing in the yard.

There are more painful days when Ino's father will look at her and all he will see is Asagao.

Currently, she holds onto Shikamaru's legs as he walks, and it's hard to tell whether she's trying to trip him or get him to drag her around with him, but in the end she accomplishes neither. It looks almost as though he mutters something and then he just sits on the ground, crossing his arms and shooting a glare toward the little girl before she crawls to sit in front of him.

She rests her pudgy hands on his face, squishing his cheeks in her palms until his glare fades and he's just left looking at her with a poorly feigned annoyance that he inherits from his father. She leans close to his face, her nose poking into his before she stops, clouds surrounding them with shade. "Shikamaru."

His question as to what she wants goes unspoken, replaced instead by tiny brows knitting together in calculation, and whatever it is that she wanted, she seems to forget it completely, falling onto her back in the grass with a fit of giggles. Her blonde hair, long for her age as it nearly brushes against her chin, fans out around her and gets little bits of grass and leaves stuck in it that her father will have to pick out later. She lets out a very un-lady-like snort, which makes Shikamaru let out a single, quiet chuckle and his lips quirk up a bit into a little smile. Her hands fly in front of her face and she sits up in front of him again, breathing hard, and now they're both happy again and she's reaching up and trying to use his head to pull herself into a standing position.

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

Her arms are crossed over her chest as a pout settles itself on her lips, and she looks at him down the bridge of her nose despite how far back she has to tilt her head to do so because they are they same height. He has to admit, the snooty demeanor she is trying to project is certainly coming across. He thinks that she's learned to be so obnoxious from his mother, since Uncle Inoichi isn't so bad and it would be just like his mother to spoil a girl he doesn't even _want_ to spend time with, but has to due to stupid clan alliances. Sometimes, he thinks their parents just want them to get close so that they can arrange a marriage between the two when they're older to strengthen the bond between clans or whatever.

To be honest, he doesn't even know what she's mad about until she opens her mouth and, in the most haughty way he can imagine her mustering up, whines, "Shikamaru! Play with me!"

He doesn't point out that this isn't a polite way to ask, that this is a demand and not a question. He knows this is normal for kids their age and that he's always been a few steps ahead of everyone else, and he also knows that Ino is more likely to throw a tantrum than amend her ways, and he really doesn't want to deal with that. With a loud sigh, he watches her rest a hand on her hip and he slouches. "What do you want to play?"

Her head falls so she's now staring straight at him, and for all her effort to seem tough earlier (she's always been bossy, he doesn't know why she thinks she needs to reestablish that every time she wants him to do something with her), she looks completely dumbfounded. The expression only lasts a second before she's back to her usual cocky act, but his lips quirk up despite himself after the moment. "Tag-- No! Let's play Ninja!" She seems overjoyed at the idea, and he squints at her crossing his own arms and scoffing.

"You're a _girl._ Ninja is a game for _boys._ "

She glares and pokes angrily at his chest, small finger jabbing surprisingly hard into his ribs. "Girls can be ninjas too! Heck, girls are even better ninjas than boys! We're smarter. I'll prove it to you! I'm gonna be the best ninja ever one day and then you're gonna have to admit that girls are better than boys." Her tone is very matter-of-fact, and though he knows that kunoichi can be just as strong as regular shinobi, he struggles to even attempt to understand the logic behind her claim that girls make _better_ ninja than boys.

"If girls are so tough, how come all the Hokages have been guys?" She opens her mouth to respond, and then just gives him an expression like she's been pinched and closes her eyes; the haughty expression is back, and she pointedly announces that if he doesn't play Ninja with her she's going to tell his mom. As little as he wants to play anything with Ino, let alone a game he doesn't actually like very much, he knows she's not bluffing about tattling and the idea of being forced to play something even more dumb with her by his mom is much more unappealing than just giving in now. They end up playing for almost two hours, and she wins more than half of the rounds, bragging even though they both know he's been letting her win. He doesn't want to deal with her complaints, and he has to admit that he likes the way she smiles when she hits him in the back with a dull, cardboard shuriken while he lazily pretends he's trying to dodge the blow. It's real enough that they can pretend, and he thinks that's all that really matters. They stop just before the two hour mark because he throws one of his own and lands it right between her shoulderblades.

✿ ✿ ✿

On her third birthday, she skips along next to her father, one of her small hands curled up inside one of his larger, warm ones. The feeling of callused skin against her pudgy fingers makes her smile to herself, happiness brought on by familiarity more than anything positive about her current situation; she knows where they're going, after all. In her free hand, she holds the drooping stems of two flowers, and she is excited to give them to the woman they are about to visit.

They are going to dinner at Shikamaru's later, the same yearly, conjoined celebration of their birthdays that she has grown used to, but that is not their current destination. They arrive and she beams, tugging her hand out of her father's to bound excitedly at her target.

山中鈴蘭

"Hi Mama!" She sits on her knees in front of the slab of stone in front of her, surrounded by others bearing the Yamanaka name, though none look as new and well-managed. She suspects nothing about that as she babbles on, her face split by a grin as her father lingers behind her, suspiciously misty-eyed to anyone who might be looking at him. "I picked these for you yesterday! They're a little wilted because I forgot to pick the roots like Dad taught me, but I think they're still pretty! I found them in Shikamaru's yard yesterday when Auntie Yoshino and Uncle Shikaku were watching me while Dad ran some errands. Shikamaru said they're called cosmos flowers."

She puts the little purple flowers down gently on the stone slab in front of her, and she beams, her father crouching to be at her level and silently resting a hand on the headstone in front of him. The stone is a clean, light grey, and the kanji carved deep into its surface is well managed so it is still legible, though she doesn't yet know what the dates engraved mean; she has only been to the cemetery with her father a few times. Though she always enjoys the perceived company of her mother, her father doesn't like to bring her to a place with such a dark meaning, even if she is still too young to really understand that meaning. As such, she sits there for almost an hour just talking to her mom's grave, and Inoichi's heart breaks.

She knows when they have to go, the sky beginning its descent into vivid golds and reds as the sun prepares to go to sleep. She pushes herself to stand, beaming at the slab of stone and offering a few final words before she has to go, unsure of when she will next be able to interact with her mother-- her grave, that is.

"I have to go now, mama, but I'll try to come back with more flowers for you real soon. And I'll say hi to Shikamaru and everybody!" She watches her father kneel in front of the grave and mutter something she can't hear, and she doesn't strain to; she knows that sometimes, her dad just wants to have private conversations with their mutual loved one. She can understand that, or at the very least, she can try to.

The adults square off to one corner of the house and shoo the kids away whenever they intrude when they finally get to the house. She's too young to understand that sympathy and privacy outweighs curiosity in this context; she can understand her father wanting to talk to his wife, but she can't understand what he could possibly have to say to Aunt Yoshino and Uncle Shikaku that he can't say to her.

Shikamaru seems to know. At least, when she begins to march, demanding, toward the grown-ups, he grabs her by the arm and says that isn't the best idea; he even offers to play with her when she insists beyond that, and she doesn't have time to think that he's probably just being nice to her because it's their birthdays before she drags him off.

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

He's never been an outstandingly social child, but when he starts to push Ino away, his mother seems to force him even harder into spending time with other kids. The annoying girl from the clan so closely intertwined with their own is pretty much the only other kid he puts up with, but more than that, he would tentatively say that he considers her to be a friend (just not in front of her, ever). So he sits in a park with a scowl on his face, surrounded by other boys his age who try to get him to join their games of Ninja and Tag and everything else that he doesn't want to do at all. Sometimes he'll let them talk him into something, but he spends most of his time on his back, watching the clouds.

"Are you dead?"

He supposes he shouldn't be surprised to see Ino. Like the complete opposite of him, she's always surrounded by people, with a huge smile on her face, and much to his embarrassment, she's the one who convinces him to play the most. It doesn't _mean_ anything, he's just seen her whining and throwing fits so many times that he's tired of dealing with it. He'd rather sacrifice his own dignity, and maybe his own life, before put up with another temper tantrum from Yamanaka Ino.

"No." His tone is supposed to sound unimpressed, but instead it's the same apathetic drawl that he's been growing more and more into through their childhood. She crosses her arms and bends over him, face close to his but eyes narrowed in a glare. She seems genuinely upset.

"So, you're just pathetic _and_ avoiding me." Her tone is slicing, and it's a cause for concern when rather than defending himself like he might have when they were littler, he just shrugs his shoulders tiredly and closes his eyes. She squints, waiting for the retort, and then lets out a 'hmph' noise. "Maybe you really are dead."

"Or maybe I really am avoiding you," he offers, and she scoffs, but sits down next to him, poking him in the side until he squirms his way onto it and shoots a glare filled with daggers at her. "And see, that's why. What do you want Ino?" If they were older, this interaction might be concerning to an adult. But considering their size, it's just vaguely amusing, watching two four year olds argue like teens.

"To hang out with you." There's an honesty to her answer that he somehow didn't expect, but he ignores it in favor of rolling back onto his back and crossing his arms under his head to form a makeshift pillow. He opens his mouth to reply, but she cuts him off, rushing to clarify. "Not to play. I mean, we can play, if you want to, but I just... I want to feel like we're friends again. It doesn't feel like that anymore."

He's surprised by that, but he doesn't look over at her this time, staring at the clouds above them as they turn to a sort of misty shade of grey, like clouds that are thinking about spilling over. He sighs, tracing shapes with his eyes as he responds, "I don't want to play, Ino." He looks over at her and she has an expression that looks torn between being annoyed, like she thinks he might not have heard her, and just being impatient, like she knows he's going to say more and just wants him to hurry up and say it. "But we can hang out, if you want to." She pauses for a moment, opening her mouth, closing it again, and simply nodding. She lays back next to him, scooting so there's only a few inches between them, and she just stays quiet. It's a companionable silence, and something he's not used to with Ino. He'd normally crack a joke, asking if she was feeling well, but he doesn't want to ruin the moment so he just lays next to her and occasionally points to a cloud he thinks looks particularly nice. They stay like that for a few minutes, before she sits up and looks over at him.

"It's going to rain," she says it matter-of-factly, like he might not have noticed. He nods without saying anything, giving her a look as though asking what she's going to do about it. She stands and offers him her hand as if to help him up. "Well, I'm going to go inside. You should come, too. Your mom will... what word do you use? Nag. She'll nag at you if you get a cold from staying out in the rain just to look at clouds."

He pulls himself up, and then pauses, looking at her seriously. "Ino... Why did you hang out with me today?"

"I..." She cuts herself off, and then looks more self-assured. "Your mom asked me to." The answer is missing that layer of honesty, but he doesn't say anything.

✿ ✿ ✿

It's her fifth birthday, and she's happy to note that when she brags about it, he no longer says that it was his birthday the day before.

Shikamaru is becoming less and less like himself and more like someone everyone expects him to be, and she can't deny that she's not particularly happy about it. She still has the typical energy of a child, running around and playing games and trying to drag her friends into it whenever she can, but he's growing up way too fast, even for someone as smart as he is.

Her father says it's because he's to be the head of the clan some day, so he has to be responsible. She always huffs out that she's going to be clan head some day, too.

"Shikamaru!" She beams as she runs at him, tackling him, and he doesn't even try to dodge it anymore.

She wraps her arms comfortably around his neck and he grumbles something about how it's nice to see her, too, and though she knows he's trying to be sarcastic, she can hear the note of sincerity laced in his tone. He squirms and pushes her off of him after a minute, and she straightens, crossing her arms over her chest in that way she does when she's getting ready to tell him what they're going to do today without really giving him any say in the matter. He always agrees to do what she wants, anyway; he says it's too much trouble to try to fight her.

"We're gonna play Ninja today!" She's tried to force him to play it with her as much as she can since that day when they were toddlers, and he is, for the most part, compliant since that day she kicked his ass. Of course, they both know that she only kicked his ass because he let her, but she's confident that some day she'll win without him holding back. Some day she'll be just as strong as all of the stupid boys.

He rolls his eyes, and it makes her pout, glaring at him. "Everyone always wants to play stupid Ninja. I'm getting tired of that game. Pick something else for once, Ino." His tone is as bored as it is pointed, and she huffs in response.

Haughtily, she retorts, "If it were up to you, we'd never play _anything!_ Ninja is the funnest, Shikamaru." She knows why he's been so bitter about it recently: a couple of weeks ago, the boys in the village finally banned Chōji from playing with them. They've always been tight knit, with her dragging him around on whatever adventures she wants to go on or making him play whatever games she wants to play, and him complacently following her around like an old dog keeping an eye on a puppy with a tendency to get itself into trouble. Akimichi Chōji has always been a part of their lives, too, as a part of the threeway clan alliances their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers and so on have worked so hard to protect, but never as close as the two of them are. He was always munching on something behind his mother's skirt.

Recently, they've both tried harder to incorporate him in the stuff they do together. Family gatherings are often just between their two families anyway, as Yoshino thinks it's her job as a family friend to invite them over for dinner since her mother's passing (after all, she's too young to cook, and who would expect him to prepare a meal?) and Inoichi likes to discuss new strategies for the Analysis Team with Nara Shikaku. Ino thinks that Chōji's mother was always closer to hers than to Shikamaru's, and since her mother's passing, Ino suspects that Daiko feels out of place. She knows that she would if it were just she and Chōji left after something happened to Shikamaru, even considering how young they are and how much time they have to grow together. Still, they make a point to invite him to play with them when he is around. Shikamaru is more insistent about it than Chōji is, most of the time.

"That's not even a word. Stop being dumb, Ino." She knows that he's only saying this because he can't think of any other argument, and she smiles to herself in satisfaction at the feeling that she has just outsmarted possibly the smartest person in the entire village. "Ninja's a dumb game, anyway. It's just for civilian kids to feel like they're doing something important. You and I are going to be real shinobi some day anyway, so why do you want to play pretend about something you pretty much already are?" Just as quickly as she felt smug, she feels outsmarted, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

"Then let's play House!" She wants to make fun of him, to say that he's too much of a stupid boy to ever have that so it's the perfect thing to play pretend about, but there's something about that she can't quite place that makes her feel uneasy.

For his part, he looks totally dumbfounded. It's like he didn't consider that she might change her mind so easily, or maybe it's just considering the mundane game she's asked him to play, or maybe still it's the fact that _she's_ asking _him_ to play House with her. She doesn't really care what it is, too pleased with herself that she's caught him off-guard once again. He turns away and mutters something under his breath, likely about how much trouble she is, and she beams.

Then he looks over his shoulder at her, and she pouts again once she hears his words. "There's no way I'm playing stupid Ninja _or_ stupid House with you, Ino. If you're not gonna pick something good them I'm going outside." She wants to ask him what could possibly be so interesting about outside, but he heads in that direction before she has the chance to say anything about it.

She rushes out after him, only to see him laying on the ground. She knows what he's doing even before she asks.

"Watching the clouds." She doesn't know what else she expected, but she rolls her eyes.

"Well why are you doing that?" She settles in next to him, staring up at the sky like him, and he glances at her out of the corner of his eye before grinning.

He stays quiet for a full minute, before she can't take the quiet anymore, and just as she's about to comment, opening her mouth to break the silence, he looks back up at the sky and shrugs. "If I look at the clouds, I don't have to look at you."

She scoffs and pushes herself up, not focusing on the fact that she got dirt on her nice dress when she laid down on the ground next to him and glaring down at him. "I'm going to go play with Chōji!"

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

Shikamaru blinks through long lashes at the girl standing in front of him, arms crossed stubbornly over her chest after yet another demand, but he is admittedly surprised by her latest idea. "Could you say that again?"

She looks obviously frustrated, and she huffs, staring off to the side as though she has lost some of her token confidence. "I _said_ ," she begins pointedly, and he already feels the urge to say no, "will you play shōgi with me?" It's a game he's been playing a lot since her father bought him his own board for their joined birthday celebration; he's gotten a lot more use out of it than the flowers Ino got him or the cake Daiko made.

Perhaps the most jarring thing about what she has just asked him is that: _she asked._ He's used to her simply telling him what to do, and no matter how much of a pain it is, that doesn't make it any less shocking when she actually asks him to do something for her, as few and far between as those occasions are. For fear that she won't do it again, he usually just says yes, but he hesitates this time. "Why?"

He would normally laugh at the indignant look she gives him, at the way that her eyes bulge and her mouth hangs just barely open as though she is amazed he would ever ask her something like that, but instead he just scans his eyes calculatingly over her face. "What do you mean, 'Why?' Maybe I just wanted to do something you like for once!"

The reason she gives him is one that makes him even more suspicious, and he imagines that she must notice that because her hands fly up in a typical surrender and she takes a small step back as though trying to literally backpedal. "I mean, not that I _care_ or anything, I just figure you won't wanna play anymore if I'm always just forcing you to do what I wanna do! And you're one of the only boys in the village who isn't totally dumb, and there are just too many girls in this village so I need more guy friends! So I can't lose you, see?" She hesitates, and when he continues to stare blankly at her, she looks at her feet. "And... playing with you makes me feel dumb."

"What do you mean, playing with me makes you feel dumb?"

He watches as she kicks her feet against the floor in a show of timidity that he's not used to from Ino. There are shy girls in the village that he's seen looming around, but Ino has always been confident and _loud_ _._ She's quiet right now and it's disturbing.

"I mean, I'm always picking the game when I come over here, and it's always dumb kid stuff like Ninja and tag and hide-and-seek. But whenever Dad drops me off without saying anything first because he has a surprise mission, you and your dad are always playing smart games like Go and shōgi and when you're by yourself because our dads are on missions, you're always off in your room playing Sudoku, or you talk Chōji into playing those games with you. Well, I'm tired of being the dumb one!"

He can't say he's not surprised. Ino is bossy and she never admits anything like this; that is, anything like the fact that she has flaws and insecurities, and more than that, she never compares herself to him in anything but a positive light. She's always prettier than him or outsmarting him or better at some game or another than him, she's never dumber than him, and she's _especially_ never dumber than Chōji. He wonders if she's always felt like that and has just kept on a brave face, or if she's only just come to this... well, he doesn't want to call it a realization because obviously it's not _true_ _,_ but he wonders if she's only just come to this conclusion. He pushes himself to stand and goes to get his board from his room. "You're not dumb, Ino... But, yeah. If you want to, I'll play shōgi with you."

When he comes back, her expression is one of utter surprise. Then, she beams, and sits on the floor where she was standing only a minute ago. "Don't expect me to go easy on you, though." He doesn't go easy on her like he usually does when they play games together, set on proving to her that she can beat him without him letting her for once, and they only have to play four games before she wins one.

"Ha! I thought you said that you weren't gonna go easy on me, Shikamaru!" She sounds excited that she's won, but almost worried that he's done exactly that: gone easy on her. He assures her that he didn't and already gets to work setting the pieces for another game.

✿ ✿ ✿

They start playing more and more games that Ino labels as "smart games." She's taken to leaving her cardboard shuriken at home in favor of bringing over Hanafuda decks, taken to leaving stuffed animals for tea parties that she's never really enjoyed and only did so she could torture Shikamaru when he refused to do the things she actually wanted to do in favor of ohajiki for the game of the same name. She lets him talk her into playing his games too, sometimes, but she much prefers shōgi to Go since she isn't very good at the latter. For all her attempts at sportsmanship, they both know how much she hates to lose.

Currently, they've almost finished a game of Koi-Koi.

She gives the cards in front of him a scrutinizing look as he gets Akatan, and then glares at him as he says "koi-koi" in that overconfident way that often gets him to lose at this game. She's much better at most of the games they play with Hanafuda decks than he is, but every once in a while he'll get very lucky and she'll have to stop herself from throwing her cards in frustration. Now is one of those times, as she looks at the three-- now four-- yaku in front of him.

"Wow, Shikamaru! I can never believe your luck." Chōji sits off to the side, munching on barbecue-flavored potato chips and watching their game with wide eyes and growing amusement as she slowly starts to slip out of her secured winning position with the one yaku sitting in front of her: Gokō. It's fifteen points, and if she were smart, she would have ended the game the moment she got it, but Ino is nothing if not arrogant.

"Oh come on, Chōji, I'm still winning!" Her tone is whiny and makes her sound like a much younger child than she really is, and she crosses her arms petulantly as she stares at the cards in front of her before beaming at her opponent. Slyly, she trades in cards from her hand for the obvious yaku in front of her, before shouting, pleased. "Inoshikachō!" She notices as Shikamaru watches her for a second in disbelief, waiting for the koi-koi, but she only sits there with a grin on her face until he finally accepts that the game is over and adds up their points in his head.

After a minute, he rolls his eyes, scooting back from the set-up in front of them. "Well Ino, you win. Again." He helps her pick up the cards and then they silently agree to find a game that the three of them can play together. Chōji didn't say that he would be coming over before he showed up, but they have grown accustomed to dealing him into games that they can, and changing games when they can't deal him into the ones they're already playing. For all that she puts up an act, she doesn't really dislike Chōji. She thinks he should be healthier, but that's his problem more than hers. She follows Shikamaru like a puppy back to his room as he grabs a hanetsuki set that he's only just beginning to teach them.

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

At the age of eight, they lay under the big tree in Ino's backyard talking about crushes while she picks little wildflowers. Or, more accurately, Shikamaru lays under the big tree in Ino's backyard while Ino sits up and gushes about how cool and smart and mysterious Uchiha Sasuke is, and he just nods along while watching the puffy clouds above them and wondering if she even remembers that he lost his whole family a few months ago.

Shikamaru doesn't know or like Uchiha Sasuke, but he thinks that if he lost his entire family, he wouldn't want everyone bothering him all of the time, especially not only a few months after the incident. He can respect that. The kid needs time to move on, and nobody's giving that to him. So rather than listening to his second best friend gush about a boy she hardly even knows who will never want her attention, he lays in the grass in her backyard and stares up at the sky and wonders what kind of clouds he would design if he was ever presented with the opportunity. He heard once that when an artist dies, they're given their opportunity to paint the sky; he's certainly not an artist, and he thinks that saying is referring to sunsets, not clouds, but he still thinks it's a nice idea, at the very least. He thinks if he were presented with the opportunity, he'd probably do something peaceful. Subtle, too. The game isn't as fun if it's obvious. After a second, he realizes Ino is still talking, only her tone is different now, less dreamy and wistful and more... annoyed.

"...you even listening to me?!" She's definitely annoyed, then.

"No." He doesn't bother to lie to her about it, looking over at her to scan her face as he processes confusion at the word, then a flicker of hurt, and then it breaks into the reaction that he was expecting: anger. He often thinks that she seems to want him to lie to her. That she seems to think that he should ditch honesty in the face of her wrath, that he should ignore the truth to spare her feelings, and he wonders if she knows how inherently against his entire philosophy that is. Still, it's like she doesn't know how to respond for a minute; like she was expecting him to pretend he had been paying attention and by admitting that he would rather zone out, he had caught her off guard.

"Shikamaru!" She shoots him an icy glare, and he has to admit to himself that it gets to him, if only just a bit. He focuses on the clouds as she chews him out rather than look at the expression on her face, at the way her mouth twists when she yells, and he doubts that's the right decision, but it's the one that he's making. "Honestly, every time I try to talk to you about anything important to me you just zone out and stare off into space! How am I even supposed to consider you my friend when I can't talk to you about anything without you getting bored and tuning me out? I'm trying to talk to you about something serious here!"

He scoffs and rips his gaze over to her, sitting up for the first time in this interaction and resting his hand on the ground next to him, grass poking out from between his fingers. "Ino, your crush on a boy you hardly know isn't important. I could care less about Uchiha Sasuke, and I don't know why you do." He sighs and makes a hand gesture in the air as though he's trying to wave away some nagging thought, or trying to catch something that eludes him, and he notices the way that she looks sort of amused, but he's not sure what about. "Look, you're free to have a crush on whoever the hell you want, I'm not gonna try to change your mind by telling you all about how Sasuke is just acting cool because he doesn't want people to know how insecure he is, or how he isn't the smartest kid in the academy or even the smartest kid you know, but then you'll just be mad at me, so why bother?"

Her look of amusement only grows and it's starting to freak him out a bit, but he doesn't say anything more, just watches her as she seems to articulate some thought of her own. She scoots closer to him, running a hand through his hair to tug out his ponytail and his eyebrows knit together as coarse hair brushes against his neck. "I get it now, Shikamaru." He doesn't know _what_ she gets, and he gives her an incredulous look.

He opens his mouth to ask for clarification, but she cuts him off, standing up and starting to run away as she calls over her shoulder at him. "You're jealous!" He can only stare at her receding back in awe.

✿ ✿ ✿

"I _hate_ her!" Ino's voice is shrill with the announcement, and she crosses her arms over her chest like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum as Shikamaru gives her a look like she's something to be observed. It does nothing to tame her anger. "What are you looking at? You know what I'm talking about!"

"Actually, I don't." She doesn't know why she expected him to. He's just a stupid boy and he could never understand what she's going through right now, even if he is her second best friend-- well, her best friend, now, she supposes, a cool, shocking sadness surging through her in place of the fire of her anger, if only for a moment. It's enough that she uncrosses her arms and sits down though, clenching her fists around the grass in his yard.

She bombarded him with her presence. It's rare for her to say anything when she's going to come over, but there's a pattern to these things these days; she always comes over at a certain time and brings certain things and everything is out of place right now. "Sakura!" She cries, and Shikamaru's brows knit together in concern as he sits next to her, looking over at her with a serious expression that she's not used to associating with him, with his air of constant apathy. He knows that Sakura is her best friend as well as she knows that Chōji is his, and more than that, it's rare for them to fight. Sakura is too timid in the face of Ino's bossiness, and often even when Ino is mean to her, she simply takes it; Ino has told Shikamaru of how she suspects it is because she secretly believes those things about herself. "I've been there for her when nobody else was, and she just says she doesn't want to be friends anymore all of a sudden! She says..." She makes a face, looking at her feet as she thinks. "She says we're rivals!"

Thoughtfully, Shikamaru looks over her with a fastidious look, and she feels once again like she is being studied like an animal one has never seen before, with the way that he stares at her. "Ino, you need to slow down," he finally says after a minute, and she glares harshly at him. What could he possibly want her to slow down for? And how can he be telling her what _she_ needs? She doesn't have time to snap at him though, as he cuts her off to continue speaking right as she starts to open her mouth to whine at him. She supposes he knows her too well. "What happened?"

"She likes Sasuke too!" After she cries it, she realizes how dumb it sounds now that she's said it out loud. She knows, logically, that it's dumb, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt, and a small part of her thinks that it actually hurts more to know that Sakura abruptly ended their friendship because of something so purely idiotic. She'd blame it on Sasuke if she wasn't so blinded by her crush. He opens his mouth to speak and it's her turn to cut him off. "And I know that it's dumb, Shikamaru, I don't need you to tell me that like I know you're gonna! Now that I'm thinking about that, it just makes all of this even worse!"

He looks like he's trying to calculate his response, and for her part, she's being patient.

Finally, he sighs, and looks over at her. "Are you really going to let this end your friendship?" She's offended by the connotation that any of this was her choice. Firstly, it's not like she was the one who approached Sakura and said that they were rivals now, that they couldn't be friends anymore because of a crush in common. Secondly, _obviously_ Shikamaru doesn't know how girls work. You can't just stay friends with another girl who's after your man _after_ she calls you out on it; you can only pretend for so long.

She glares at him and scoffs. "What am I supposed to _do,_ Shikamaru?! I'm not gonna lose Sasuke to that Billboard Brow!" When he sighs, she loses some momentum, leaning back and giving him a look between confusion and hurt.

"You're not a very good friend if that's how you're looking at the situation." He stands up, and she looks up at him with wide eyes. He turns to go back inside, and she wonders if she should follow after him, but then he looks over his shoulder at her and what he says is the final nail in the coffin, "And I'm glad that I'm not chasing Sasuke's tail, too."

He leaves her there alone, and she stares at the shōji after they slide shut. She's left to speculate on everything that just happened, between the harsh words Shikamaru left her with, and Sakura's announcement earlier that day, and she wonders what it says about her that she's struggling internally with whether or not she's a bad person because a small part of her feels like this justifies the part of her that says this should have happened earlier

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

She's been pushing him further and further away. He doesn't know why she's mad at him this time (after all, she hasn't really given him any opportunity to make her mad at him), but he decides that the answer is probably a resounding "no reason." That she's just making up something to be mad about and she'll either come around or completely forget whatever it is she's telling herself he's done this time.

So he doesn't apologize. He doesn't see a reason to apologize for something he didn't even do, after all, and he thinks that's not an illogical course of action, especially considering just who it is he's dealing with. Whatever she's mad about, apologizing probably won't make up for it anyway.

✿ ✿ ✿

She doesn't come around.

She spends all of her time either running the flower shop alone, or sitting in a crowd of girls she hardly knows and only tentatively calls friends gossiping about things she doesn't care about, or arguing with someone who used to be her best friend, or sitting at home doing nothing, or cooking meals she's getting tired of to eat by herself, or waiting for her father to get back from his latest diplomatic mission to Suna, or, perhaps most importantly, ignoring Shikamaru. It wouldn't be out of character for her, except she has been pushing him away for a year and stopped talking to him completely three months ago.

And she's never done that before.

She's never pushed him away completely, just cut off all contact, and even when she does stop talking to him it's for a couple days at the most because, seriously, she is such an unbelievable pushover. Only this time she's not. This time she takes every possible opportunity to avoid talking to him, to avoid seeing him or interacting with him completely, and when she is forced to see him because of the closeness of their families (which hasn't been in a while), she's actively bothering him.

She wonders if it hurts him as much as it hurts her.

Tensions have been rising between Konohagakure and Sunagakure in the past months as much as they've been rising between Shikamaru and her, and she has to admit that it's awful, it's terrible, but she's _grateful._ She's grateful because his dad is the smartest person in the whole village and Lord Third knows that so he's always being sent on missions to Sunagakure, and of course her dad is sent along with him. But it's good. It means that she has time to herself, she isn't forced to sit through awkward dinners with Shikamaru and his parents (or even just with her father).

Every few weeks, her dad will be sent home, because while they can technically send you on a mission for months or years at a time even when you have an eleven-year-old daughter who's clearly going through an emotional struggle, they don't. She hasn't personified "they" in her head yet, but she knows it's someone, and it's someone she's not always all too fond of. For the most part, she's happy for the few days at a time when her father is home. But sometimes, Chōji's father will be sent with them and her father will gush at dinner about how it's just like the old days, and he'll talk about when they were her age and he'll enthuse about missions and how they used to torment their squad leader and he'll smile and tell her that he hopes she can be as close to her teammates some day as he was (and is) to his. These are the nights that she spends in her room later, head tucked under her pillows as she cries her eyes out and her father packs up his stuff for another mission downstairs.

That's where she is now. She's burying her sobs in her sheets and scolding herself internally because this is stupid, it's _so stupid,_ but she's been torturing herself endlessly over it (and over how stupid it really is).

She can't get over that blatant feeling of betrayal and abandonment that filled her mind and her body to the pit of her stomach until she was rattled by nausea that day when she was nine. Okay, so she's never expected Shikamaru to be the comforting type. But she's also never expected him to be the close-the-door-in-your-face-right-after-your-best-friend-declares-your-idiotic-rivalry-that-you-don't-even-want type.

She finds herself hoping that it kills him inside as much as it kills her when he sees her arguing with Sakura in class. She hopes that he looks at the two of them and does that thing where he winces and pretends it was a shrug of nonchalance, and then takes his seat but secretly stares at her for the rest of the day like the worried idiot she befriended all those years ago. She hopes that he _regrets_ not being the comforting type.

Her father enters her room without knocking. Her face is beneath her pillow, tucked into the sheets, and she thinks she can pull off pretending to be asleep (he'll see through it, but he won't probe, and she loves him for that) before she sniffs, betraying the image she's lined up. But Yamanaka Inoichi isn't the comforting type either, and he has packing to do, so he just delivers his message and leaves her there, more grateful than he can probably imagine. "There's someone at the door for you."

She stumbles down the stairs, sniffling and wiping at her puffy eyes. She wonders if her father knew who was at the door and purposely omitted it because he really did notice everything that was going on between the two of them, or if he didn't even bother to check (he never does, but he _knew_ it was for her). She wonders if Shikamaru's heart breaks as much as she _really_ wants it to when he sees her, eyes red, hair a mess she would normally never allow a boy her age to see her with, more genuine than she's been around him in a long time.

She doesn't ask him. She just steps forward and wraps her arm tightly around him and _clings_ and mutters muffled apologies repeatedly into his shirt.

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

They're talking again. It's really all he can ask for, he guesses, and he wonders sometimes if it's because of that awkward day when she clung to him in front of her door before he'd even had a chance to step inside and didn't pull away until multiple hours later (he hadn't planned on staying the night, but he guessed his mom didn't tell him not to stay out too late and he can use that as an excuse), until her throat was raw from sobs and apologies and they had to move so her dad could leave for his mission, or if it's just because they're on a team together. He knows that forces you to acknowledge another person, as he's been subjected to a few of her rants about how Sasuke is paying attention to Sakura and not her ( _but it's not as many as it would have been when we were younger,_ he thinks).

Asuma-sensei is training with Chōji, which isn't actually abnormal, and it leaves them stuck with each other. It's not as bad as he acts like it is, playing up his annoyance with the situation and making it clear that this is a drag (but it's not, not really), although he really isn't too happy about training with a girl. He doesn't think she's inherently beneath him because she's a girl (she'd kick his ass if he said anything like that, he's sure), but he watches her gasp for breath and flinches.

She's panting, but he still has to fight as hard as he would if they were enemies. She gets mad at him if he tries to go easy on her, and he knows it doesn't do any good for either of them if he does, so he doesn't.

He throws two shuriken, one aimed directly for one of her sides and meant to catch the light and her attention, the other slightly to the other side, which she steps directly into as she dodges the first. He wants to ask if she's okay, but what he does instead is move as quickly as he can to be behind her, kunai finding a place against her jugular and pressing threateningly as a lazy smirk plays on his lips (even if he feels a little sick). "If I were an enemy, I could have killed you right there, Yamanaka," he sneers as he drops the kunai instead of pulling it against that porcelain skin, and he's so grateful because he knows he's going to have to kill people some day, it's a hazard of the job, but he hopes it never has to be her. She's as loyal to Konoha as he is, so he doubts he really has to worry about that.

Suddenly, he's jumping back to avoid a slash from the same shuriken that was just embedded in her side, her fresh blood coating it and her fingers as evidence, and he crinkles his nose at the thought that she might have got him with that because yeah, okay, he's a ninja and he has to be merciless and cool and take pressure and _whatever,_ but blood is blood and blood is gross and he definitely doesn't want somebody else's blood mixing with his. He could get so sick from that kind of attack, and he doesn't even want to think about it.

Luckily, he doesn't have to. Okay, only sort of luckily.

Blood is spilling quickly over Ino's fingers as she stumbles closer to him a bit, and promptly falls against his shoulder, and _oh shit,_ he hadn't meant for her to step that far to the side and that gash is actually really deep and she's bleeding all over him and yeah, it's gross, but it's more concerning than it is gross so he doesn't even care. He wraps his arms around her back as her legs start to shake, and it adds a little stability, but in the end, she's just dragging them both down.

She laughs and he stares at her in wide-eyed shock and horror.

"The clouds are so nice, Shika..." She points and blood drips from her fingers to her face as she does it. "That one looks... kinda like a rabbit..."

✿ ✿ ✿

Ino has seen probably more than most thirteen-year-olds have, and has definitely seen more than most thirteen-year-olds should. Everything has been such a huge blur in the past few months, with the Chūnin Exams and the death of the Third Hokage and the inauguration of the Fifth and Sasuke defecting from the village, and getting back to real life and pretending to be normal is _hard._ She and Sakura are friends again, something she didn't really expect, but isn't unhappy about. Shikamaru is a chūnin, which falls into a similar category as the previous news.

She stands alone in the flower shop, her father on an errand that most people's mothers would be running, completely numb.

She doesn't cry very much anymore. She doesn't like to, because it makes her feel weak and like she isn't living up to the Yamanaka name. When she does, it's when she's alone, in the confines of her bedroom, like she's an eleven-year-old girl isolated from the small world she calls home all over again.

She's alone now, but she's not in her bedroom, and she hardly even feels it as the tears start to fall because, as she said, she's completely, totally numb, like she's in the Land of Snow with no shoes, only she thinks this hurts a lot more than hypothermia. She guesses she's never had it, though. She remembers Hinata having a mild case last year, but she didn't lose any fingers or toes like the horror stories Ino's familiar with.

Fittingly, she doesn't stay alone for long. Obviously, someone was bound to find her breaking down eventually, because even if she tries to hide in her room every time, it's not like her privacy is highly respected. Her dad doesn't barge into her room, really, but he'll let her friends in sometimes and Shikamaru and Chōji and Sakura don't have the same value for privacy that her father does.

The bell at the front rings, and she doesn't really have time to force herself to relax as she buries her face in her hands to wipe away the tears rushing down her cheeks that she wonders if she's imagining because she can't _feel_ anything.  


Shikamaru stands in front of her, and the way his brows furrow in quiet concern tell her that she's not making it up just as much as the wetness of her hands do. "What's wrong?" He doesn't ask 'Are you okay?' because they're at a point where everyone knows the answer to that question is 'No', and it's not just her life that status applies to; her heart breaks more and more for Sakura the more Naruto promises to bring Sasuke back.

She doesn't say anything. It's like that day when they were eleven: he stands in front of her, looking worried and confused, and her eyes are red and puffy because she's just been crying (she's not sniffling though, she hasn't been crying long enough for her nose to start running yet), and she doesn't say anything before just stepping forward and hugging him like she might die if she lets go. He's taller than her now, and she's not apologizing, just standing there silently, but it's an eerie reflection of that night. His arms lift and wrap around her with only a second of hesitation as-- she assumes-- his brain stutters.

They talk eventually, and she sits on the counter with him sitting next to her as she gushes about how hard everything has been on her (and occasionally giving him a sidelong glance as if wondering when he's going to stop being quiet and nodding along and interrupt her; she's grateful that he's listening, but she can't imagine that he doesn't have something to say about everything that's spilling out). One of his arms is still wrapped around her, and though he never looks at it, never looks at her sides where they dip in the way other boys their age do, his hand is resting on the scar that's been there a little under a year now. It's something she knows he feels guilty for, but it's something she wears as a reminder, of how dangerous the life of a shinobi can be, and of the fact that she's not going to fall behind the boys. Not again. He feels bad for hurting her, but she feels bad for letting him.

Finally, they get to the reason he has come to the shop (no, he really doesn't have psychic powers, and yes, he really does have a reason for being here): just like one would expect from a boy entering a flower shop, he's come to buy flowers. He stalks around the store for a minute, and she's actually glad because it gives her a few minutes to take deep breaths and wipe the puffiness and the last of the drying tears from her eyes and face. When he returns, he's carrying four red carnations. She knows she doesn't have to tell him what they mean, but she feels her heart shrink a little when she reflects on it: fascination. Distinction. _Love._

She doesn't look in his eyes as she rings them up and takes his ryō, doesn't look up at all until he's walking out of the store with his hands buried in his pockets and his flowers still sitting on the counter in front of her. She sniffs in confusion and then looks after him, looks at how deliberately slowly he's walking, as though he's waiting for her to notice something. "Uh, Shikamaru? You forgot your flowers...?" She poses it as a question, though she's not sure what the answer is, and she's not sure if she wants to know it.

He looks over his shoulder at her, and that signature lopsided grin is back, just as lazy and tired as ever. "No, I didn't." Her heart stutters even as she tosses him a confused look, but he's at his normal brisk pace now, meaning that he's out the door before she would have a chance to move around or even jump over the counter. She decides to let it go, smiling down at the flowers that rest in front of her as she thinks about what they mean: fascination. Distinction. _Love._

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

He runs his fingers through his hair in frustration, fingers scratching sand off of his scalp. He's been in the desert for three weeks and he's already sick of it, sick of the sand and the hot days and cold nights and unstable ground as the sand shifts beneath his feet with every step and sick of the rogue ninja that he's trying to catch. He doesn't know who said that Sasuke and Orochimaru might be in Suna, but he really hates them. He's especially mad because there's a nagging blonde following him around, telling him what to do and flirting with him, only it's not the nagging blonde that he _wants_ to follow him around and tell him what to do and flirt with him.

"Shikamaru," she pouts with her entire body, and he buries his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms and begging whatever God there is for death.

His head is throbbing, and he honestly feels sick to his stomach, which is probably because he can still taste the bile in the back of his throat from when he was sick to his stomach two miles ago and vomited into the sand. He snaps his attention to Temari and swallows the lump in his throat through his dry mouth, trying not to be as annoyed and confused and... dizzy? He gets hit with realization like a truck.

He rasps for water, but she just looks at him in confusion because he drank the last of the water last night and they were so far out in the desert that they wouldn't be able to refill it until tomorrow, and he knew that. What's going on hits her a second later as his breathing picks up and he falls to his knees in the burning sand.

He can feel gravity more clearly than he ever has before and his hands are normally cold, but right now they're just a hot as his flushed cheeks as he lifts them to his face in the attempt to gauge his own temperature or cool at the very least his skin off. She strips him, and surprisingly she's not commenting, just focusing on treating him. Temari's a wind release, so there's nothing she can do for him in the water department (he supposes that only a very skilled water release would actually be able to do anything about their lack of water, anyway), but to her credit, she fans him as he lays on the sand, feeling like he's baking and mostly naked. He's still wearing his net undershirt and his underwear, but he feels like an idiot for thinking it would be fine to wait until they were in shelter to change into looser clothes.

The symptoms of a heat stroke have been displaying themselves for hours, and he really should have been paying attention, because honestly, he's _never_ sick, and while yes, he does often get headaches, it's not from mild annoyances like being hit on. He should have noticed when his legs almost gave out under him five miles ago. He should have noticed when he wasn't sweating during the sun's apex four miles ago. He should have noticed when he was puking his guts up two miles ago. And if he wasn't going to notice, _Temari_ definitely should have. She lives in Suna, she sees heat strokes all of the time, he's sure. After all, people from much cooler villages than his stop in for diplomatic meetings all of the time and he can hardly believe that they just adapt to the hot weather, and she's arrogant if she thought his cheeks were flushing because of her comments.

Eventually, she tucks her fan away and slings him over her shoulder and practically sprints in the direction of the nearest town, and he knows they're only fifteen miles outside of Suna and they should get there in three hours if they're running, but he remembers reading that heat stroke could kill you if not immediately treated.

He fades in and out of consciousness and wonders if this is where he dies. If he dies in a desert just outside of Sunagakure, slung over the shoulder of a blonde who's been hitting on him mercilessly since a kid he didn't even care about defected and he was sent after said kid, without saying goodbye to anybody back home, without keeping Naruto's stupid promise to bring Sasuke back since he knows the idiot's never going to.

And how would he, anyway? Sasuke clearly wanted to leave, was clearly more obsessed with some other goal than staying in the village with the people who care about him. Shikamaru had never personally seen people like that before Sasuke, but he's heard stories about them from his dad and his sensei and he knows that those aren't the kinds of people you can drag back.

So why is he trying?

When he wakes up four days later, he's told he's lucky to even have survived.

✿ ✿ ✿

Ino is used to going to lunches with Sakura in the afternoons (though they don't actually eat very often, typically sitting around and drinking tea and pretending they aren't hungry), doing her best to revive that friendship around the curtains of a rivalry that neither of them was ever that serious about. It's forbidden territory in conversations, but they both know that Sasuke and Naruto's rivalry was always worse. It probably always will be, if one of the idiots doesn't kill the other. What Ino is not used to is being dragged out to lunch with the rest of the kunoichi in her village (well, the rest of the kunoichi her age, that is). But they're all squished into a booth in one of the corners of a newer barbecue restaurant, listening to Hinata raise her voice more than any one of them would have guessed was possible to be heard over the Sunday afternoon chatter to tell them an embarrassing story about when Neji was a kid.

Tenten laughs harder than the rest of them and Hinata smiles at her knowingly. On the one hand, Ino is happy for her, and she's happy that someone got through to that emotionally constipated asshole; on the other hand, the other three women at the table, counting herself, are all separated from the ones that they love. Naruto has been off training with Jiraiya for over two years now and has given no indication of when he's coming back, Sasuke defected shortly before that and he's given every indication that he's never coming back, and Shikamaru...

Shikamaru is chasing a piece of ass in Suna. Well, okay, technically he's not; he's traveling in the Land of Wind gathering information on Sasuke's whereabouts, which she admires, but he's doing it with the unnecessary addition of Temari. Maybe she wouldn't be so bitter about that if she hadn't not been allowed to go with him because she needed to focus on her medical training at home, and because it would only take longer if she was there distracting him, but as it stands she is most certainly bitter. He doesn't even write to her, and sure, he's not writing to anyone else, either, but Ino's _not_ anyone else. She's Yamanaka Ino and he's Nara Shikamaru.

"So how has your medical training been going?" Hinata is looking at Ino and Sakura, and she feels grateful that she is allowed to duck out of the conversation without anyone noticing (Ino is never quiet unless someone else is talking, and though she will often speak over Sakura, no one will notice if she doesn't talk for a while) as Sakura immediately straightens and pipes up.

She tunes out the conversation, staring out the window at the hustle and bustle of people shopping from street vendors and only occasionally turning her face back to the table when she is addressed. A few groups catch her eye (a couple of civilian boys who look like they're going to cook up trouble, a tall man in a mask that she's never seen before that she'll report decidedly later, a group of young genin chattering excitedly in front of a stand selling sugary treats), but her eyes settle on one pair in particular.

A woman who looks middle-aged holds the hand of her small daughter, who can't be much older than six. Her blonde hair is lopsided and down only to her shoulders, as though she has cut it herself or otherwise had someone inexperienced cut it, and she whines at her mother while pointing at the same candy stand that the group of genin boys are gathered around. The woman has the same brown hair and warm, tired eyes that she's seen on her mother in pictures, and it makes her heart stutter and her eyes fall to her lap as though she's just been caught doing something bad and scolded like a child. The chatter at the table seems to have ceased, and she's not sure if it's because of her or not, but when she looks up Tenten looks lost in thought and Hinata looks like she's absorbing information.

Eventually, Hinata gives her the same shy smile that she's used to over the years, and she smiles back as best she can. "I'm surprised that you're here, Ino." It's an odd sentiment, and she cocks her head curiously.

"What do you mean? I mean obviously the invite to lunch was sorta out of nowhere, but Tsunade-sama is busy today so I wasn't training and it's not like I have anything else to do on a Sunday afternoon besides pick up some small mission or train with Asuma-sensei." Most of her really good friends are sitting in front of her. Shikamaru is the only boy in the village she really considers a friend other than Chōji, who she doesn't really hang out with when Shikamaru isn't around, and who is on a mission anyway, and Asuma, who is on a "not-a-date" date with Kurenai, the same reason that Hinata is available (plus, hanging out with your sensei is kinda weird if you're not training or on a mission). Sakura snorts next to her, and she feels indignation flare up.

"I bet you she didn't hear about it. If it's not gossip, information never gets through her thick skull." Sakura's tone doesn't carry the genuine venom it might have even a year ago, so Ino only calls her Forehead once before giving up on the playful spat. Still, that doesn't mean she's satisfied with being left out of the loop on whatever reason they didn't expect her to come to lunch today.

She looks expectantly between all of them as Sakura drinks from her amazake and Tenten finally rips her interest from the steaming dumplings in front of her. Hinata has already finished her food, and Sakura is halfway there, but Ino and Tenten have both only been picking at theirs. It was Sakura's turn to pick the restaurant and as the most willing to experiment of their little group, she always picks new things when she can. She guesses they've all settled into the same choices.

Hinata always goes for ramen, although she's avoided Ichiraku (Ino supposes that she must feel odd there without Naruto, even though they never exactly went together), Ino herself picks Yakiniku Q without fail every time, and Tenten generally chooses Chinese restaurants.

Finally, Sakura scoffs, shoveling as much rice as she can grab with her chopsticks into her face (and Ino makes a point of remembering to make fun of her for it later) and breaks the tension. Tenten picks at another dumpling while she talks. "Shikamaru is supposed to get back from Suna today. I'm surprised you weren't the first one to hear about it, honestly, with your mega crush on him." Ino would normally snort at that, would avoid bringing up that Sakura is one to talk about mega crushes but would certainly _think_ it, but all she does now is shove herself to stand.

Without a word, she slams the ryō for her portion of her meal onto the table and rushes out of the restaurant.

It occurs to her that she should probably have asked for more details before rushing out.

She stands in the hustle and bustle of a road that is only just quieting and looks around. The first place she would think to check would be Shikamaru's apartment, but her mind zeroes in on 'supposed to' and realizes he probably hasn't returned yet, so she rushes to the gate without a hesitation. Izumo and Kotetsu are there, as always, and she waves to them. "Guess you're here to check up on Shikamaru?" She nods, looking at him with wide blue eyes. "Relax, he hasn't come through yet. Lady Hokage isn't expecting him to arrive for another hour."

She nods sharply, but scrutinizes his choice of words; _he_ hasn't come through yet, Lady Hokage isn't expecting _him_ to arrive for another hour. Sure enough, when he peaks over the hill, hair longer than the last time she saw him and vest hugging him just a bit too tight (which she thinks is a bit ridiculous, could Lady Tsunade not send him a new standard issue vest while he was away), he is alone.

Anger still flares up in her gut as she approaches him at a steady pace while he practically _meanders_ down the curve of the hill, arms behind his head as though he's laying down and relaxing even as he walks through the gates of his home.

Her knuckles pop as her fist connects with his jaw, and she thinks she hears him swear as he stumbles back from the shock of the blow. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Izumo stand and reach out as though he might need to pull her off of him, but Kotetsu continues to laze in his seat as though he hasn't seen anything out of the ordinary. Shikamaru straightens, his hand rubbing at the developing bruise on his jaw as he opens his mouth, either flexing the muscles to see how much damage she did or preparing to say something, and she's really not in the mood to listen to him right now. " _Nara Shikamaru!_ " Her voice is meant to be cutting, but if he has any reaction at all, he doesn't visibly display it.

"You couldn't even write me! You couldn't spend _two minutes_ to jot down a quick note: Hey Ino, I'm gonna be back in Konoha today. Hey Ino, mission's almost over. Hey Ino, see you soon. _What about that is so hard?_ "

She knows she's breathing harder than she needs to, and her hands are balled into fists at her sides as tears bead up at the corners of her eyes but she finds it awfully hard to care about any of that as she stares at the way Shikamaru just gives her a dumb look like he has no idea what she's talking about. "And why did Sakura of all people know? You could write to Sakura to let her know you were coming back, but you couldn't bother to--"

"Did it occur to you that Sakura is the Hokage's apprentice?"

His words are sudden and she blinks in surprise. "Did it occur to you that _I'm_ studying under the Hokage, too!"

He continues to give her that infuriating dumb look, and she clenches and unclenches her fists at her sides in the attempt to calm herself before she snaps at him again, the tears in her eyes starting to run down her cheeks. "And I don't know what's worse: The fact that you didn't tell me, or the fact that everyone but me seemed to know and I had to hear it from _Sakura!_ "

She glares pointedly at him, but he doesn't say anything. She doesn't even notice he's stepping toward her until he's right in front of her, gripping her shoulders tight enough that a civilian might sustain bruises, even flinch under the intensity of his gaze.

She falters for a moment, but doesn't stand down, glaring up into his eyes, hoping that maybe if she shoots daggers at him long enough they'll actually pierce through his defenses. "You left me here... You left me here _alone_ for a _year_ just so you could chase some piece of ass in Suna."

"Ino." His tone is cool, and she shivers as she stares up at him. "You know that's not what happened."

"I don't _know_ anything, Shikamaru! Tell me, what ha--"

She's cut off by Shikamaru gripping her shoulders tighter and smashing his lips into hers, and it feels more desperate than she had imagined kissing Shikamaru would be, but for a minute, the world fades away. There's no wind blowing her hair into and out of her face in an annoying cycle like waves pushing and pulling the sand on the shore, there's no rustling of leaves and chirping of crickets that permeates Konoha evenings, there's no faint smell of growing restaurant chains and dewy blades of grass. There's only her and Shikamaru for the few moments that it lasts.

He pulls away, but only slightly, his face still hovering near hers, his eyes scanning over her expression as though trying to determine whether or not he has made the correct move in a fight. It makes her roll her eyes and laugh a bit, and the spell is broken but the moment isn't over. Until it is.

She hears clapping in the background and her cheeks go red as Kotetsu shouts compliments while Izumo tries to shush him as though this is embarrassing to him. She faintly acknowledges that she probably should have waited to assault Shikamaru until he was at least within the gates of the village, but she doesn't actually have any regrets; not really. She doesn't kiss him again, but she leans in close and rests her forehead on his.

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

They've had to work hard to make sure their budding relationship stays a secret. Izumo and Kotetsu are cooperative, and he suspects they know quite a bit about forbidden relationships, but it's a personal struggle not to reveal it more than any fault of someone else. He can't even talk to Chōji about it, which is possibly the hardest thing about the whole ordeal. He and Ino both know that their relationship is forbidden, and Chōji has always clung to the clans' traditions tighter than either of them. They'll have to tell their clans eventually, and they'll definitely have to tell Chōji, but he knows what will happen when they do even if he doesn't want to admit that to himself, and he isn't ready for the consequences yet, so he buries his anxieties in her lips.  


It's hard to hide a relationship when it's spanned the course of over a year, and has been brewing much longer than that. It's hard to pretend you don't love someone, even if you've loved that person since you were twelve or thirteen years old and have been doing your best to pretend you don't in all of that time. Being here makes it hard, but so, so worth it. He knows that wasn't the reason he went on that long mission to the Sand, but it certainly helped to shove down the feelings that he was pretending not to have, pretending he didn't want to have.  


The problem with bottling things up for too long is that eventually they just explode.

Right now, that's exactly what's happening, but it's not to him.

Ino is possibly the strongest person he knows, always pretending that she's fine, stuffing her own feelings down to be strong for everyone else; he'd find it admirable if he didn't know how much it always kills her. He thinks it's even worse when she convinces herself that it's all real, that she's not really breaking inside. He wonders if that's why this is hitting so hard; because she's caught herself up in her own web of lies and now the entanglement of the silk is killing her as much as it's killing him to see her like this, eyes red and puffy, shaking in front of him, but it's not because she's cold. She never gets cold, even as her shirt lays somewhere across the room.

And maybe he'd care about that under different circumstances, care about gathering up the shirts they've just removed if she wasn't already so exposed beyond that, beyond bare skin and loose hair.  


Her breakdown was so sudden and yet so unsurprising that rather than comment, he just wraps his arms around her and pulls her so her face is pressing into his shoulder. He thinks that's probably better for her, anyway.

"I just don't understand, Sh-Shikamaru..." His heart breaks for her a little bit as she stutters and sobs.

"What don't you understand, Ino?" He wonders if that's not supportive enough, but he knows that she needs an anchor right now, not pity. She needs logic right now, not for him to break down right alongside her.

It's funny how much things can change, and then change right back. When their sensei first passed away, months ago, it was Shikamaru who was making a point of being strong, of being the one to hide his emotions so his teammates could properly grieve in that moment. He'd cried, but he remembers that he blamed it on the cigarettes. And he did hate them so much at that time.

And then it was Ino putting on the brave face. He isn't sure if it's because stubbornness has always been one of her faults, right down to a stubborn refusal to show emotion, _real_ emotion as opposed to the fake layers of narcissism and she puts up like walls to defend herself, or if it's because of Asuma's last words to her: _"Ino, you are strong willed, and dependable. Chōji and Shikamaru, they're total goof-offs. Keep them in line."_ And he supposes that's sort of what she's always done, in her own bossy, over-dramatic way that she's lucky he's grown to love; but she's been trying so much harder since their sensei said that to her.

It must be killing her.

"H-he wouldn't let me heal him! I... I could have healed him, I could have done _something!_ But he stopped me, he told me not to. H-he told me that it wouldn't do anything... It would have! It would have... have done something..." She's sobbing into incoherence now, and he runs his fingers through her hair and tries to shush her. He's always been awkward with comforting people, especially with Ino, who rarely shows genuine emotion. He thinks it makes her feel weak. He also thinks that's idiotic, but it's something that traces to the core of her being and he can't exactly force her into confidence. He only wishes it worked that way. "I don't get it, Shikamaru... Why wouldn't he let me help him?" And he really has to think about that.

Because he doesn't know. He can't tell her exactly why their sensei wouldn't let her help him because he has no idea. But he'll try his damnedest to offer her a solution before he tells her _that._

He opens his mouth and falters for a moment, but he doesn't close it because he knows how outwardly uncertain that looks. Finally, he starts, "You know when you go on a mission? Like a really long one?" If she doesn't, she will soon. They both know that they can't avoid the creeping war for much longer. She nods, though. "There's that feeling like you only have two options: You can keep on going, pushing yourself, until you maybe get home. Or you can just go to sleep. Get some rest. Start again tomorrow."  


He pauses, glancing at her out of the corners of his eyes to see if she gets it, but she's just staring at him with that almost-hopeful expression that smothers him and makes him feel like he's choking on his own heartbeat. "That's what it was like for Asuma-sensei. He's been on this mission, this _exhausting_ mission, for so long... And he had two options. Push himself, or get some rest. I guess, he just made a choice. Who are we to say it was the wrong one?"

A part of him wonders if he really believes that, while another part of him wonders if he would have made the same decision if he was in Asuma's place. He can't give an honest answer to that. Not while he's looking at Ino's face, with wet eyes and hair sticking to her cheeks.

She seems to calm down.

They don't do anything. They'd planned to spend a night together before going into a similar sort of long mission, before possibly losing one or both of their lives on the frontlines of a battlefield that's barely established itself. They don't, though. He refuses to take advantage of her like that no matter what they'd planned, and he recognizes the expression of mixed emotions, but mostly relief that washes over her face when he says as much. The next day, they go out, and they don't see each other for days, but neither of them is dead. It's a relief and a torment.

✿ ✿ ✿

She can't even bring herself to cry at her own father's memorial. Of course, it's not that she isn't upset; she just lost the only parent she's ever had, it would be impossible for anyone not to be upset about something like that. The problem more closely resembles an inability to grieve any more than she already has. Her heart has broken again and again in the past weeks, for the fellow medic-nin caught on the field and the people they weren't quite able to heal, the fellow shinobi she barely knew past smiling faces on training fields, and of course, her heart shatters all over again whenever she thinks of Hyūga Neji and his family. Of course she is upset about the loss of her father, but if her heart were to break any further, it would simply crumble into the sand that the Fifth Kazekage was using only weeks ago to help defend her people and his people alike, so she sits with her back straight and dry eyes.  


All three clans are there, but no one looks at her for, she suspects, the same reason that her father had trouble looking at her sometimes, a pain he tried to hide that is now being felt by all of his close friends: She looks too much like the memories. She listens to people around her cry and choke on their own sobs and gasp for breath, and though she feels her own heart tug, she remains silent and dry, her hair occasionally falling in her face. She lets out quiet sniffs, but she knows that if anyone were to look at her, they'd judge her for her lack of emotion. (Perhaps the Yamanaka elders would commend her for being the perfect clan head, staying calm in the face of tragedy.)

Shikamaru finds her quickly. After all, this memorial is just as much for his father as it is for hers, and the entirety of their clans being gathered in one place doesn't make it any harder for the two of them to gravitate toward each other; they've been tracking each other down at these large gatherings between the clans since they were children. And she guesses they're not children anymore, really; they can't be.

She lets herself look at him, at his usual slouched posture that seems to carry more weight in it than it normally would, at the bags under his eyes that scream of exhaustion and too many new responsibilities, at the way his hands hang at his sides as opposed to where they are usually stuffed in his pockets. Everything about him is alien and speaks of discomfort, but she knows better than to bring it up with him.  


"How are you?" His drawl is the same, but his voice is raspier, as though he's just had an entire pack of cigarettes or has just sobbed until his throat was raw like everyone else at the memorial, but that's not what she focuses on. _How am I?_ It's a surprisingly difficult question. Her immediate instinct is to respond fine, but that would concern any normal person in this situation, and on top of that, Shikamaru _isn't_ a normal person and would immediately see right through that. He knows her much better than any of the other people here, including possibly herself, and so she really has to think about what to say to him.

"Exhausted." She supposes it's the truth. She doesn't think she's ever been this tired in her life, with the politics of a war that ended only a month ago surrounding her work life and the emotional burden of losing so many friends and family members at home. Maybe she wasn't that close to Neji, but she lost cousins and uncles in the war, and Nara Shikaku was her father on the days when Inoichi wasn't enough.

He laughs, but it's the sort of cut and dry laugh of a man who's not okay and she shoots him a sympathetic look. "Me too," he breathes after a minute, and then they just sit in silence. It's more comfortable than trying to force a conversation would be, but that doesn't mean it's not slowly strangling her. "Let's leave."

She blinks, both at the suddenness of his words and at what they actually mean, what they imply. She blinks at him through thick lashes that feel as though they are stained with her own tears and sweat and the blood of her comrades. They're not, they can't be, they're the same charcoal black and golden blonde that they've always been, but they feel as though they've changed just as much as the rest of her has. She shivers and rubs at her arms through her sleeves, grateful for the black sweater that covers both her arms and her midriff, although she suspects that the cold, crisp air has nothing to do with her sudden chill. "What?" Her voice is as steady as it always is, but there's a note of uncertainty buried in its depths.

She watches him look away, wearing that same expression that he always has when he's thinking, and she imagines his internal struggle, but still doesn't interrupt it, knowing that a small part of him always feels like it needs that. He needs to need it, to need to rationalize everything he does or says, because it always makes it easier for him. He's never said as much, but they both know that about him. After a minute, he looks back at her, his expression slightly softer, slightly less like he's pasting on apathy just so the depression doesn't eat him whole. "Do you want to leave?" Then, more confidently, "Leave with me." She only hesitates for a second.

"Okay."

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

He lays sprawled out on the couch in his childhood home, staring at the ceiling and trying to imagine every way that marrying Ino would be terrible, because he knows that's the sort of thing he's supposed to be thinking of. He's been clan head for just over a year now and if the clan heirs couldn't be together, the clan heads would definitely be forbidden.

So he zones out against the plain white spackle of his ceiling, eyes focusing and unfocusing as he gets lost and found in his own thoughts: marrying Ino would be a total betrayal of Chōji. Maybe he can deal with letting down his collective clan, and maybe he can deal with letting down Ino's, and maybe even the entire rest of the Akimichi clan to go with that, but Chōji is his best friend, and his heart would break to learn of his two best friends breaking all of the rules their families have established about marriage. Their whole clan histories are intertwined, and a large part of that is because they _haven't_ had any marriages between the three of them. Akimichi have married Uchiha, Yamanaka have married Aburame, Nara have married Hyūga, all three have married figureheads from other villages and civilians, but they do not marry each other. Ino would always be telling him what to do, bossing him around in that way she's been doing since they were toddlers. It would drive him crazy, even if he often finds it kind of endearing at this point, the way she treats the whole world like her kingdom while simultaneously being remarkably grounded in reality.

Indeed, Shikamaru can never marry Yamanaka Ino, so he tries not to think about the way her eyes can reveal her sorrows and her angers and her joys even when she is making her best poker face, or the way her hair will tickle his face when they're lying in his bed in the middle of the night nursing mutual nightmares, or the way her nose crinkles just slightly when she's thinking really hard about something. He also tries not to think of how she would look in a traditional kimono sewn by the village seamstress, or the way she would insist on doing her own flower arrangement and would enthuse him about the meanings of the flowers in the middle of the night when neither of them can sleep and silence needs to be filled the same way she does for other couples' weddings.

And all of that brings him to the core of the problem, the reason that he's even thinking about any of this: He knows today is the day they're forced apart, forced to leave each other for good. Ino is on her way there, probably wearing something that he'll very much want to delay their plans for, and it'll probably be on purpose, but he won't, because they have more important things to do. It's the anniversary of their fathers' deaths, and the guilt of never telling them of their relationship has been killing them even more than it was when the men were alive. His mother has decided to start cooking dinner on the anniversary every year, even though this is only the first, and he's not heartless enough to turn a widow down.

They argued about it for weeks, and then discussed how to tell her for weeks after that. In the end, they've spent months strategizing for revealing their relationship to his mother as they strategized for the war. He supposes the two things aren't that different: it feels like they're preparing to march into a battlefield, where a woman wields guilt as a weapon and glares daggers, wrenching them until they torture the person on the receiving end. He feels any hope he had about maintaining his foolish relationship slipping through his fingers as he imagines that lilting tone and those angry eyes.  


He hears a knock and lets it pull him out of his self-pity for now.

When he opens the door, he is greeted with a warm smile and a warmer hug that's so filled with affection he wonders if she doesn't know, too, what is bound to happen today. She radiates nothing but warmth and positivity and he has known her too long to think it is completely genuine, but he lets her have the little lie.

Neither of them speaks for the duration of the wait for his mother to return from the market in the village, though he can't tell if it's a comfortable silence or a tense one. Ino is fidgeting, but she's also leaning into his shoulder, her hair pooling into his lap. She's left it down, something she almost never does, since it is a tradition in both the Yamanaka and Nara clans to wear their hair up, but his mother is one of the few people who's seen her without a ponytail anyway.

It's a surprisingly warm day for October, warm enough that Ino wears one of her typical cropped shirts that reveals the scars stretching across her stomach and arms, though it's in a much darker shade of purple than usual, almost black. He thinks the pants she wears might actually be his, but they sit nicely across her hips and he's certainly not about to complain about it. He's a shinobi, but he's still an eighteen-year-old boy.

He can hear leaves scuttling across the ground with the wind through the cracked window, and he sucks in a loud breath through his teeth as the sound mixes with his mother's laugh, fast approaching.

✿ ✿ ✿

The door opens with a click and she shoots to be sitting straight, her eyes snapping to the shōji as they slide open to reveal not only Nara Yoshino, but Ino's third best friend and his father. Somehow, seeing not only Chōji, but his father, too, who is still alive and well, but mostly just _alive_ , makes the whole interaction much harder. She's not an idiot. She knows that she and Shikamaru are going to be forced to break up after they make their announcement, perhaps even immediately, but she was counting on Yoshino's quiet guilting tactic to hold her through to the end of the night. Chōji and Chōza will yell of betrayals and broken rules, and while that may briefly draw some of the fire, that is only a minor relief compared to what she was expecting.

"I'm home," his mother announces, but it's with a quiet, knowing tone that tells them she knows they are right there and doesn't feel the need to raise her voice, something that makes Ino flinch reflexively. "Guess who I ran into at the market?" She carries a brown bag of vegetables in her arms, and the men are behind her carrying two bags each. Ino wonders if Yoshino always overdoes meals, or only when she and Chōji are coming over; it's a nice thought, especially when Chōji is there, and since she has given up on dieting. The lingering poverty of a village just weeks after war still hangs over her head, and she has learned to appreciate the luxuries of warm food as opposed to soldier pills and large meals as opposed to battlefield rations being split with teenagers who should be too young for the heat of battle.  


She hops up to her feet and bows, more formal than she's been with the woman in a long time and clearly revealing her buzzing nerves, while Shikamaru simply stays seated and waves with the sort of casual "Yo" that drove her crazy when they were kids. "Good afternoon, Yoshino-san, Chōza-san!" Her tone has the sort of piled on cheeriness that makes Shikamaru flinch in her peripheral vision, and there's a grin pasted onto her face that feels too bright even to her, but it's too late to dial it down, really. "Chōji, it's nice to see you!" In point of fact, she hasn't seen him in almost three months. "Do you need any help with the groceries?"

She hasn't used the proper honorifics with her second and third families since she was a small child, always referring to them with the more affectionate "oba-san" or "oji-san", or in the past year, simply addressing them by name. It's difficult to refer to someone as though they are a doting aunt or a joking uncle when you've been soldiers fighting the same war, and not only in the literal sense. Yoshino's warm smile, sharp eyes eyes, and passive-aggressive jokes will always be imprinted in her mind, but the image of her as a true ninja, fighting with the other mothers in their village far surpasses the image of a tired housewife. Chōza's warm laugh, sage advice, and brilliant cooking (though they never could get him to cook that often) have a special place in her heart, but they've been pushed aside by the memories of a man willing to give his life alongside his son to protect his home. And of course, she has always known Chōji's strength, but it's never _really_ felt life or death before; she can no longer think of him as just the comic relief.  


"No, I think the boys and I have got it, but thank you for the offer, Ino." Yoshino's tone is kind, not the scolding she is used to hearing when she talks to Shikamaru more as a superior than as a mother; it made her laugh before she was seeing it from the perspective of a girlfriend and not a snobby, bossy teammate who was saying the same things. Still, she finds it hard to be mad at the woman who always acted as a replacement for the mother she lost.

"Well, then let me help you prepare dinner!" Ino has always been a much better cook than most people would expect, as her brash and impatient nature doesn't scream that one has the necessary skills to trounce around on the arm of an important clan head or lord from another land, but she's been cooking meals for herself and her father since she was considered old enough.

She waits until Yoshino nods, looking too exhausted for only grocery shopping, but they both know she wasn't really asking, despite her chipper tone and polite attitude. Her job in the kitchen is simply helping to prepare the vegetables, but as she skins a dozenth carrot, she is grateful for the opportunity to do something with her hands while Shikamaru's mother grates radishes next to her, humming a tune she recognizes, but she's not sure where from. "It was a really nice idea to get everyone together for dinner tonight, Yoshino."

As opposed to the small talk she is desperately searching for, Yoshino scolds her like a proper housewife that she should be paying attention while she cooks, and immediately her focus snaps to what she's doing. She doesn't need to pay attention to simply peeling carrots, but she knows better than to argue with the woman. She thinks that if Shikaku hadn't passed away during the war, he surely would have died while trying to argue with Yoshino like he was so often known to do; the thought makes her surprisingly nostalgic, but the smile that passes over her face is still rather sad.

It's not even an hour before dinner is finished, and she's back to fidgeting.

☁️ ☁️ ☁️

If Shikamaru's tense shoulders reflected on the atmosphere in the room, it would be silent, like his father had died today and not a year ago, or like someone has announced a terminal illness. Ino's fidgeting has a similar level of tensity behind it.

The atmosphere in the room does not reflect how tense the two of them feel, though, and Yoshino and Chōji laugh at a story Chōza shares without the sad note that always carries after a story from his childhood with their dead fathers, so he supposes it must have been one of a different sort. Ino laughs politely, but he just stays quiet.

"So, how have you three been? It's been a while since I've seen you all together." Chōza is clueless, and he freezes for a second.

His eyes flit to Ino, who wears a similar deer-in-the-headlights expression, her eyes wide like the very does he was just taking care of yesterday evening.

Time itself does not freeze, though, and Chōji merrily talks over their personal dilemmas to inform his father how their training was going last time they met up, talking about a technique the two of them are trying to develop while leaving out entirely the fact that Ino hasn't been a part of it. She doesn't seem angry though, for the first time leaning into the conversation with an interest that seems more genuine than like she is trying to put up walls to separate herself from her own discomfort like all of her interest before this has been.

"You see, we already know that his shadow can travel through other shadows like a boost or an extension, but we're working on perfecting the control on what things he traps through the shadows and what he only uses as an extension. Then we can use the Partial Expansion jutsu to extend my own shadow, and he can work through that to reach his targets easier, that way there's less of a limit on how much space he can put between himself and the enemy. It's safer, you know, and," he pauses to take a particularly big bite of his shimotsukare, and waits politely until he's swallowed to continue, "if we get it, then we can work Ino in and pass on another InoShikaChō strategy to our future kids." His heart stutters, and Ino looks like hers might have stopped altogether; while he shows no outward reaction, Ino's eyes noticably widen and her mouth opens as though she's about to stutter out a protest before Chōji continues, "Of course, that's not happening for a while, right guys?"

Stunned, he just nods, while Ino continues to look frozen and sort of sick. He's sure someone is going to notice their strong reactions at any questions aimed at the two of them eventually, notice the way Ino is fidgeting or how Shikamaru keeps reaching to rest his hands on hers under the table to help calm her down. He's sure that the people around him are more observant than Akamaru or even Kiba, the dolt, and they've both noticed by now that there's been something going on with Shikamaru and Ino for a while now, no matter how careful they've been. Kiba said it was something about the two of them always smelling like each other. "Relax, Chōji, you're only eighteen. You don't need to freak the other two out by implying something." He's so grateful for Chōza's intermission that he can almost breathe again, his eyes roaming over to Ino for a last time to see if she's had the same reaction. "So Ino, what have you been up to while the boys have been doing all this?"  


He watches her eyes move to him, watches her open her mouth and then clamp it shut like she has changed her mind on whatever she was about to say. She looks as though she's begging him for an answer, begging him to tell her what to say, but he can't tell her anything. It isn't just because he can't advise her in this situation without revealing that she's practically been leeching off of his confidence this whole dinner, but also because he doesn't have an answer. She takes a visible deep breath that the others don't seem to notice and then smiles her best fake-smile at Chōza before starting, "Well, I... um... my training..." She trails off, and he can see the gears turning in her head.

"Ino and I have been seeing each other." His tone is much more collected than he feels, but he keeps his face in that trained apathy that he's had mastered since he was a ridiculously young child to be doing something like that. He hears drums pounding in his head that he vaguely translates to a nervous heartbeat in his ears, and he studies Ino's expression for a second before looking back at the rest of the room. It feels as though the entire world has simply halted its rotation and the air around them has just lurched, and it leaves his head spinning.

"Excuse me?"

✿ ✿ ✿

She stares between everyone else sitting at the table: Shikamaru looks defiant, as though just the silence in the room might challenge him, Yoshino looks as though she has just stepped on a slug, Chōza looks like a volcano preparing to erupt, and Chōji looks utterly surprised. She doesn't see any flickers of hurt or betrayal yet, which she takes as a small relief in an impending storm, like an umbrella that's broken and just too small. As for herself, she is surprised that Shikamaru chose the moment he did to reveal their relationship, but she went into the interaction knowing that it was an announcement they had intended to make before the end of the night and thus she can't be as surprised as the chosen family around her. Suddenly, everyone turns to look at her, and her face flushes under the scrutiny. Only Chōza's expression changes, a minute shift that looks like a fire trying to force itself to be wet, and she actually finds it less comforting than the declaration of war his face was before. "Y-yeah, uh..." She clears her throat and straightens her back, putting up a shield of faux confidence. "Yes. We have."

Mount Akimichi explodes, and she is tempted to duck behind Shikamaru like a rabbit ducks into its den for safety, but she is forced to sit still, shameful under the force of his screams. She swears that the yells of Akimichi Chōza could cause the earth beneath them to quake without a faultline to be seen. She doesn't even focus on his words, his anger a white noise that simply _hits_ her like a kunai to the stomach or a heat wave during a drought.

Yoshino's hand rests on his back, and the size difference between the two makes it look like a china plate on a table, as though it belongs there but doesn't really fit in any particular place. She shudders when the woman gives her an expectant look, and she feels like the six-year-old who broke one of the Nara woman's vases while playing too rough all over again.

"Ino." She shivers, but doesn't look away, her eyes lingering somewhere near Yoshino's hairline just to avoid looking her in the eyes. "I can only assume that the two of you don't mean seeing each other visually." She nods, once, hesitant and curt. "And the two of you know it's forbidden."

She opens her mouth to respond, but it's Shikamaru's voice that she hears. She supposes that's better for the both of them, anyway. "Of course we're aware of the fact that it's forbidden, mother. We've been agonizing over that law since we were fifteen, we certainly don't need my mother and _someone else's parent_ to remind us of the rule that was made by terrified men generations ago. Ultimately, you both can scold us endlessly but we're not going to regret what we have and what we've done together." His voice sounds more insistent than his usual bored drawl.

She notes the way Yoshino's eyes narrow and her cheeks burn in shame, her gaze staying in her lap. "What you've done together?" Though she says nothing explicitly, there's an implication behind her words that makes Ino blush more and chew on her lips.

Chōji lacks Yoshino's tactic, and his jaw drops as he stares between the two of them. " _Have you had_ sex?"  


She flinches at how shrill his tone is, at how betrayed he sounds now, and she taps her fingers against one another and twirls her thumbs around each other as the heat of her face begins to creep down her neck.

"I can't believe that's your top concern right now, Chōji," Shikamaru says, and then rolls his eyes and continues, "but of course we have. We're adults and I'm hardly about to let any of you act so high and mighty about it. After all, we're all here, aren't we?" Their teammate makes a face at that, but only crosses his arms and looks off at the wall to sulk from this point, which she finds more bearable than if he were scolding them or yelling at them like his father and Shikamaru's mother. "Maybe we're still just kids to you, but we're both the heads of our clans, we're adults now and adults who have been in relationships for three years can hardly be expected _not_ to do anything. Not that it's any of your business." He holds her hand under the table, pulling it away from her lap so she can no longer let herself be distracted by the feeling of her own skin on skin, running callused fingers over her knuckles. She breathes a quiet sigh of relief.

"I know that we aren't married," she adds, before any of the others can speak up. "But neither of us has ever been that traditional, right? Even the most traditional of the three of us doesn't believe in the waiting until you're married shtick, and anyone who does comes from a clan that's so stuck up that we wouldn't want to be anything like them, anyway."

Chōji looks incredibly uncomfortable with the conversation, but the anger in Chōza and Yoshino is clearly flaring. Chōza's face is flushing with anger until it looks like a large plum, veins bulging in his forehead and nostrils flaring until he looks like the very angry boars she has seen depicted on the much older battle flags of her clan in memorials that come from the Second and even the First Shinobi World War, and Yoshino's lips are pursed and pale.  


She is surprisingly relieved when Chōza's dam bursts. She supposes she's glad he isn't going to have an aneurysm from all of the tension and blood rushing to his cheeks. "Do you suppose this entire situation is some kind of joke?" She's about to stutter out an answer before he continues, "For-- three years, was it?-- three years, the two of you have been fooling around like children, breaking rules that have been integral to our clans for generations, and you two seem to think this is funny! Clearly you both know this is forbidden, and yet you're prancing around doing it anyway!"

"That's not to mention," Shikamaru's mother cuts him off, her expression sharp if not quite a glare and her voice softer than it should be, "that the two of you never bothered to tell your fathers. Do you know how betrayed they would feel to know that you'd been keeping this from them?" Ino's head drops in guilt, and she starts playing absentmindedly with her fingers again to serve as a distraction. "A parent has a right to know this sort of thing about their children." Her gaze moves to Ino now, and she can't meet the other woman's eyes as she speaks, "Ino, you were Inoichi's only daughter; he would have wanted you to tell him about this."

"I know that!" She cries, her head snapping up to look helplessly at Yoshino, and she thinks she sees a flicker of regret or sympathy cross the woman's face. "I know my father would have wanted to know..."

She sniffs and tries to ignore the growing wetness in her eyes, leaning into Shikamaru now that she's realized she's allowed. "The two of you know what you have to do." It's Chōji this time, and she looks up at him in horror of the implication now hanging over her head, at what he is all but telling her to do, or maybe telling Shikamaru to do; it doesn't really matter.

The worst part is that she does know: She knows that the two of them need to break up, that they both need to move on and marry other people and produce heirs to their clans that won't have to worry about whether they're technically a Yamanaka or a Nara.

She shivers under the different looks of the three others in the room: Yoshino looks more sympathetic than angry, though there's still that distinct flare of betrayal underneath it all that lets Ino know they aren't forgiven, but the boys are both distinctly angry and hurt, in different scales. Chōza is positively fuming, the angry red of his hair and swirls on his cheeks matching the rest of his face at this point. Chōji still looks more betrayed than angry, which is both better and worse than what she was expecting; she is grateful that her friend isn't mad at her, but she hates that she has hurt him.

"No, actually, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, Chōji. Maybe you could enlighten me." As their friend opens his mouth, Shikamaru gives a sweeping and cutting glare at all of them, then continues, "The fact of the matter is that it's not your decision to make, what Ino and I do. It's nobody's decision but our own, whether we stay together or break up, and that decision certainly doesn't lie with the heads of other clans because of some stupid tradition none of us ever had any say in. And it's not our fault we've always been together, is it? That lies on _your_ shoulders. Our fathers died before we could tell them about us. Don't make us regret telling _you._ "

"You don't get to do that." Her voice is quiet, but just as dangerous as a poisoned kunai or a venomous snake on the only path back to the village, "You might be the clan head now, but you're still my son, and you're still just a kid." Ino clenches her hands into fists at her sides, tears still spilling down her cheeks as they flush with anger and determination. The mix of chemicals in her head makes her feel drunk.

Nara Yoshino is completely different from the anger she is used to. She is used to the bruises and black eyes of Hurricane Haruno, and the quiet precision of Hyūga Hinata, and the quaking rage of Auntie Mebuki, but it is so rare that she is on the receiving end of Shikamaru's mother's fury that she isn't used to calculated danger, sharp glances aimed just so and guilt wielded as a kunai that's twisted in your gut. Everything about her is calm yet fierce and it terrifies her a bit.  
  
She holds her head up defiantly, staring danger in the face despite the guilt and fear and anger that all coil in her gut, and spits, " _You_ don't get to do _that._ No matter whose parent you are, you're not in charge of who we can or cannot fall in love with, or marry, or have children with, just because you're upset that we've broken a tradition or because you're afraid that our happiness might be bad for the clans' alliance. Any parent should prioritize their child's happiness over stupid things like that." Her cheeks have blossomed with red and her head is swimming, but she holds herself steady as she watches the three of them.  
  
Yoshino hisses, "How dare you," while Chōza belts, "You are a little girl who is in over her head, and you have no idea what you're talking about! You don't know anything about love or marriage or having children, and you especially have no knowledge of clans or traditions or just how many you are breaking just because you were made clan head while you were still a child due to your lineage. The two of you are all I have left of my best friends, and I hate to think of how disappointed in you they'd both be if they were here right now."  
  
In the end, the fight goes on for hours.  
  
In the end, they lose.  
  
At midnight, the food on the table is cold and forgotten, likely to be served as leftovers when his mother is too depressed to cook anything, and the tears that were running down her cheeks earlier are dry, but the despair isn't gone. At midnight, she can only watch on helplessly as the last of Shikamaru's arguments are put to death, and then the two of them are given a gracious moment of privacy to say their goodbyes, even if they aren't being separated in any permanent way. At midnight, they kiss, and she sobs, dry and weak, against his mouth and refuses to pull away because the moment she does, it's over. _They're over._


End file.
